


"The Self-Destructive Nature Of The Human Condition."

by RoryKurago



Series: Dog Soldiers [2]
Category: Dog Soldiers (2002)
Genre: Five Stages of Grief, Gen, Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-11
Updated: 2021-01-11
Packaged: 2021-03-16 03:53:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28700220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RoryKurago/pseuds/RoryKurago
Summary: The shrinks said he hated himself. That he shouldn’t, but he did, and they could understand why. Suvivor's Guilt That, Cooper knew, was not what it was. It was a countdown from the moment he staggered out of the forest to the night they finally came for him.
Relationships: Cooper (Dog Soldiers) & Annie Wells, Cooper (Dog Soldiers) & Harry Wells
Series: Dog Soldiers [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2103828
Kudos: 2
Collections: Rory's 100 Themes Writing Challenge





	"The Self-Destructive Nature Of The Human Condition."

**Author's Note:**

> 100 Themes: 27 - Hate

The Army shrinks initially told him he hated himself. It was survivor’s guilt and he’d invented the wolf narrative to explain why only the Lance Corporal of a well-trained section had survived.

“Sure,” he snorted. “ _Homo homini lupus est_. You twats been reading the same books as Brucie or what?”

He watched a lot of documentaries about spiders in the days after the glen. The shrink tried to tell him that was a symptom of his self-hatred too. Honestly he had nothing better to do while sitting on his arse waiting for the chain of command to make a verdict on his case, and the lock-up only got a few channels on the telly free of static.

So fuck it: life was meaningless anyway, and everyone he ever gave a fuck about except his mum (still safe in her flat in Norwich, they assured him) had or would die bloody. Might as well steep himself in information about the third worst thing evolution ever shat out--women and the howlers in the woods taking spots One and Two. He had nothing better to do. (And no booze in Isolation to take the edge off that epiphany. Thorazine, though. Hell, _all_ the Thorazine, especially once he threw his meal tray so hard it embedded in the drywall like a shuriken.)

He didn’t see the general Army shrinks after that. Special Weapons took over. No more self-hatred narrative, but a lot more questions. How did the howlers he'd seen move? What were their weaknesses? How _exactly_ had they killed each and every member of the section Cooper had outlived, and what _precisely_ was their preferred M.O.?

Cooper told them a lot about spiders. And women. And the self-destructive nature of the human condition, the way Bruce occasionally tried to explain it over too many pints at the pub.

The world shrunk for a while: steel bars, syringes, spider documentaries, shitty mashed potato, Special Weapons asking if he was sure he didn’t remember anything else, and the absolute ironclad certainty that They were coming for him.

He heard them everywhere. On the stairs. In the _hurr_ of the radiator. In the rattle of bins outside the flat, and the clunk of pipes overhead.

In his dreams, he and Sarge tunnelled over and over through the walls of the psych ward into a meat locker where the lads all hung on hooks and Megan waited to hand him a 9mm and tell him to shoot the dog. The 'dog' was always Ryan. Or, on really bad nights, he dreamed he sat mute in the back of a Land Rover bumping through the forest to the cottage, unable to tell the men around him that they sped to their deaths.

He didn’t tell the shrinks any of that. When sodium pentathol didn’t work, Special Weapons handed him back to the shrinks, who pumped him full of Thorazine.

There were a lot of different ways Cooper had foreseen things going down once he got back and opened his big fat gob:

Supernatural cage matches.

Public court-martial.

Quiet alleyway snuffing. (“Can’t have you blowing the lid off Special Weapons, Lance Corporal Cooper; not when they’re finally making so much progress.”)

How the howlers fit in, he wasn’t sure yet, but they’d be involved.

What actually happened was that, once the brass were sure he’d keep said gob shut, he was permitted to escort Annie to the memorial service. Helped her pack to go back to her Mum’s place in Manchester. A quiet stint in an Army Psych ward, then a quieter two years serving out the remainder of his contract in an office. A polite but firm suggestion that he leave the army. Honourable discharge.

The chain of command never actually forced him out like he’d thought they might, but they did keep sitting him down with Special Weapons. Trying to interrogate him into remembering something new. _More_.

It was worse in the city, bizarrely. Before Psych, he saw howlers even during the day: in columns of steam from footpath vents, in the reflections on shop windows, in stacks of cement sacks on construction sites. He couldn’t bring himself to call them what they were. Werewolves were the dumb cunts in _Twilight_ and that shite. The stone-cold bastards that had killed his Section…

After Psych, it wasn’t so bad. The Thorazine kicked in. A procession of shrinks persuaded him that even by his own logic, there was no way the bastards could stalk him by day. So he stopped seeing wolfmen everywhere. Eventually stopped the Thorazine.

They would still be coming, of course. He’d told the world they were here. They knew who he was; what he was; what he must have done to come back with his story. They would hate him.

He didn’t hate them anymore. Not while the drugs were working, anyway. It was just how things were:

He knew what they were, and 'what they were' was a breed that had killed his section, and who took revenge for their own. Like Cooper.

They would try to kill him; he'd kill them first. Circle of Life.

But he was pretty stubborn about not remembering anything useful for Special Weapons. So: quiet discharge. Pension. No benefits but no black-bagging.

He went and visited Annie briefly. She was uncomfortable to see him; that much was plain from how much she spun her mug, and dunked her biscuit until it broke. Swore. Got a new biscuit. Asked him how things were lately. If he’d seen any of the other lads’ missuses.

She had a new fella; he could smell it on her. Smell it, and see the extra toothbrush in the bathroom, different brand of beer in the fridge, pair of brown dress shoes that weren’t exactly her or her Ma’s style in the hallway under the stairs.

He didn’t hold it against her. Four years. Time she moved on. Time he did, too.

He saw himself out without the kiss on the cheek for an old friend’s ghost. Didn’t think the gesture would be welcome anymore. Didn’t think it polite or necessary to tell her he wouldn’t be coming by again, either. She seemed guiltily pleased to see the back of him. He didn’t begrudge her that.

None of the other lads bar Bruce had had a steady missus. Cooper hadn’t been close enough with Bruce to know her well, and anyway she’d already run off to Spain and stayed there with a philosophy professor, last he’d heard. Better that way. But that was his last civil duty checked off.

He scoured the country for eight months before he found was he was looking for. Did some hefty reading into local lore. Measured out walking and driving distances to the nearest population centres.

A hefty chunk of the money he’d put away went into buying a cottage as close to the middle of nowhere as he could get without leaving the Isles. The rest went into stockpiling as many munitions and explosives as he could surreptitiously get his hands on.

Over the years, he’d read some of the books from Bruce’s things. (Things the missus who ran off to Spain hadn’t wanted.) That ‘self-destructive nature of the human condition’ Bruce prattled on about. _Homo homini lupus est_. Fuck, Cooper hadn’t understood half the shit Bruce said when he was alive, and dead Bruce didn’t make any more sense, but _this_ line Cooper understood. Man is wolf to man. Human nature – hate, loyalty, revenge – made monsters of everyone eventually.

He didn’t bother to spend any money on reinforcing the cottage. That wasn’t the point.

He also couldn’t be sure that Special Weapons wasn’t somewhere nearby watching him prepare this set up like a pack of stoats waiting for something to die in a hunter’s snare so they could snake it. To be perfectly candid, he didn’t give a shite. They weren’t the point either.

As long as they didn’t fuck with what was going to happen, they could bloody well have all the leftovers they wanted.

The point was: on full moons, he sat himself down to a nice supper, banked up the fire in the living room, and then stripped bare-arse naked and went and sat on the porch with a shot gun across his lap and a basket of grenades beside him.

Those howlers were coming sometime. They knew where he was. Sooner or later, they’d come get him. He was just going to get them first.

On the other side to the grenade basket was a slab of beers. He habitually worked his way through one over the course of the night. If they got him before he was too drunk to shoot straight, more power to them. Otherwise, he was going out the way every man of that section had deserved to: with a loaded weapon and a beer in his hand, singing a sweet _Fuck You_ to the fuckers coming for his head.


End file.
